Fyre Festival 2 tickets on sale and customers are buying, disgraced founder says
Written by ABC Audio All Rights Reserved on August 23, 2023
(NEW YORK) — The disgraced founder of the 2017 Fyre Festival, Billy McFarland, is selling tickets for a follow-up event and customers are buying them, he said in recent posts on Instagram.
An initial batch of tickets for Fyre Festival 2 sold out just two days after they went on sale, McFarland said on Tuesday.
“FYRE is about people from around the world coming together to pull off the impossible,” McFarland said. “This time we have incredible support.”
The follow-up event is set to take place in the Caribbean toward the end of 2024, McFarland said in an announcement video. He has yet to provide further details about musical acts, an exact date or a venue.
A tentative date for Fyre Festival 2 is set for Dec. 6, 2024, according to a festival website. Forthcoming rounds of ticket sales will feature passes ranging from $799 to $7,999, the website says.
All ticket sale revenue will be held in escrow until the final date is announced, McFarland said, adding that he plans to hold pop-up events around the world in the meantime.
In 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to scheming thousands of people out of money from the Fyre Festival. He was later sentenced to six years in federal prison for defrauding investors.
Customers and investors lost over $26 million in two separate fraud schemes, according to the Department of Justice. The festival was supposed to take place in the Bahamas in 2017.
The calamitous festival was the subject of two documentaries: Netflix’s “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened” and Hulu’s “Fyre Fraud.”
McFarland unsuccessfully tried to get released from an Ohio prison in August of 2020 due to COVID-19 conditions in the facility.
In a court filing, federal prosecutors argued that McFarland had a disciplinary violation, which counts against his release.
According to court documents, McFarland had a pen with a USB recording device inside the prison that he initially denied knowing about.
During a seven-month stint in solitary confinement, McFarland put together a 50-page plan to capitalize on the interest garnered by the Fyre Festival, he said in the video posted on Sunday.
“It has been the absolute wildest journey to get here,” McFarland said.
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